About Daniel Brown
Daniel has worked to address the effects of climate change across North America. He helps develop strategies that preserve land for waterway protection, reduce planet-warming emissions, and improve climate resilience. He also works on efforts to restore the main river corridor through dam removal, leads HRWC’s efforts to address PFAS contamination, and coordinates the Huron River Water Trail. He enjoys empowering conservation based on sound science and getting people to enjoy Michigan’s natural resources. Daniel joined HRWC in 2018 and lives in the Horseshoe Creekshed.
Resources
Huron River Watershed Council PFAS Resource Portal
Multi Lake Water and Sewer Authority Wastewater Treatment Plant (Dexter, Washtenaw County)
Transcription
Rebekah Warren: This is 89.1 WEMU. For more than three decades, Issues of the Environment has helped our community better understand the environmental issues impacting our lives, our health, and our future. I'm your host, Rebekah Warren. For years, conversations about PFAS contamination have largely focused on industrial sites, manufacturing facilities, and major pollution events. But a recent study by the Multi Lake Water and Sewer Authority suggest that some PFAS entering our environment may be coming from a much more familiar source: everyday products used in our home. These findings raise important questions not only about water quality, but also about responsibility, infrastructure, and the growing challenge of addressing contamination when there isn't a single polluter to hold accountable. Joining us today is Daniel Brown, climate resilient strategist and emerging contaminant specialist with the Huron River Watershed Council. Daniel, welcome!
Daniel Brown: Yeah, thanks for having me, Rebekah!
Rebekah Warren: Daniel, many listeners associate PFAS contamination with factories, military installations, or major industrial spills. But this study points to a very different direction. Tell us what researchers found and how they determined that PFAS being detected in the Dexter area waterway system appears to be coming primarily from everyday household products, rather than a single industrial source.
Daniel Brown: Now, this is something that we're starting to see across Michigan and really nationwide. So, people will remember that Tribar Technologies was a user of PFAS and contaminated the Huron River and will bring worldwide contaminated parts of Western Michigan. PFAS were associated with military bases and firefighting foam and industrial applications, but what we're seeing and and what is painfully true is that PFAS that are so pervasive through all of the products that we use. They've been used for decades really with very little regulation in all kinds of consumer goods and through our agricultural food supply that they've really just become embedded in in everything that we used, which makes avoiding exposure and removing them from the system much more challenging.
Rebekah Warren: I think that's a great point. And for a lot of us, I think we understand that wastewater treatment plants were designed to remove biological waste and conventional pollution. But what is it about PFAS components that are so difficult for our existing treatment systems to remove?
Daniel Brown: So, they are toxic at very, very low levels with exposure over time. So, you typically think about lead exposure or other contaminants that we hear about in the news, and we're talking about parts per billion. And in the case of PFAS, we're talking about low parts per trillion levels. We're talking about quantities that are a thousand times smaller are still toxic with repeated exposure, and it's just removing that small amount of anything from water is very challenging and very expensive. So, you need very high grade filtration methods or you need really pretty advanced technologies of water treatment to remove those chemicals.
Rebekah Warren: One of the things that I think can make this issue challenging for people to understand is that many of us don't think a lot about what happens after water goes down the drain. Help us understand the pathway. How does PFAS move from products that we use in our everyday life into the waterway systems and eventually into the environment?
Daniel Brown: Yeah, this is a great question! I think it's really central to the whole PFAS discussion. So, you can imagine that PFAS is used in manufacturing all of the goods and things that we use. And it's in pesticides, it's in herbicides, it is in things that are applied through agricultural processes, which then gets into our food. It's in our carpeting, it's in our furniture, it;s in our clothes, it's in our personal hygiene products. So, all of these things are exposing us. It's getting into us. And then, all of those things are going through our wastewater. Every time we flush the toilet, there's likely some PFAS going out with the rest. And then, that goes into a wastewater treatment system of some kind, whether that's a private septic tank or a municipal wastewater treatment system like what we're talking about here, and that has to be treated and discharged back into the environment. And there's lots of different ways of doing that, but once that PFAS goes through the system if it isn't removed anywhere along the way, then it's it's going to make it sway back into environment. One of the problems with PFAS is that they don't break down like other organic contaminants or toxic things. So, they essentially last forever, and that's why they're called "forever chemicals." So, with every cycle of eating the PFAS and getting exposed to PFAS and going through a wastewater system and then being reapplied to the environment, if we're constantly using more PFAS throughout that cycle, you can see how that just sort of amplifies itself every time you go through that rotation. Constantly using more PFAS, constantly putting PFAS out into the environment through a wastewater system, it builds up over time, and that's how you get to these toxic levels in the environment.
Rebekah Warren: I'm Rebekah Warren, and this is Issues of the Environment on 89.1 WEMU. Today, we're talking with Daniel Brown of the Huron River Watershed Council about a recent study examining PFAS in the wastewater system serving portions of Dexter and the surrounding communities. Daniel, you mentioned the high cost of cleaning up this contamination. One of the interesting aspects of this study is that it challenges the traditional environmental model of identifying a single polluter and require them to pay for a cleanup. How does this model break down when contamination comes from thousands of households using legal consumer products?
Daniel Brown: Yeah, that's a really challenging question! Once it's in our consumer products and our goods and our food, it's really kind of impossible to mitigate it at that point. You know, we can't put treatment mechanisms on every wastewater system for every home. That wouldn't be efficient. Putting treatment options on sort of larger-scale wastewater municipal treatment systems is possible, but also not ideal and very expensive if it's coming from all these sources. It's far more cost-effective and more efficient to treat at kind of these industrial sources. Again to use the Tribar example, they put filters right on the affluent at Tribar and at the wastewater treatment plant that was serving Tribar. And that was a far more efficient way of removing PFAS from the system. But if it's coming from houses throughout an entire wastewater system, there's certainly no cost-effective way to treat that. So, really what it comes back to is removing PFAS from those products to begin with. And I think this really bring up a key point, which is that there are lots of ways that we all can can reduce our own exposure risk in the products we use and the things we choose to do and so forth. But that's really a drag. That's really not something that we as consumers should have to worry about. These chemicals shouldn't be in things that we're using to begin with. And in many cases, there's really no reason for them to be there, other than convenience or other things. So, what we say is that the problem is going to keep getting worse. PFAS will continue to accumulate in the environment and in ourselves until we put laws in place that reduce how PFAS are used and essentially halt non-essential use of PFAS.
Rebekah Warren: One important finding of this study is that the testing of nearby private drinking water wells has not detected PFAS contamination to date. How should residents interpret that information? What's the difference between an early warning signal and immediate public health risk?
Daniel Brown: Yeah. So, I'll take the part about the groundwater wells first. So, PFAS has been found in monitoring wells that are right around the wastewater treatment plant. So, you've got all the wastewater coming into the treatment plant there. They're discharging onto infiltration beds, and that's essentially soaking into the groundwater, and there's some natural filtration involved with that. So, monitoring wells tend to be shallower, and there are several right around the wastewater treatment plant, They have found PFAS at, what I'll say, they found one PFAS contaminant, in particular, PFOA, P-F-O-A, that's above the contaminant above the drinking water criteria. I wouldn't say the levels they've found are alarming, but they are above the the drinking water criteria. Now, there are nearby drinking water wells for some private residents. The thinking is that they're more protected, and that there's some separation between the upper groundwater aquifer and the lower groundwater aquifers. So, the monitoring wells that are shallower have picked up PFAS pretty consistently at that low level. The drinking water wells for now are safe, and those monitoring wells are therefore sort of providing kind of this early warning system. So, if it's in the shallow aquifers, there's always a chance it could bleed down or find a connection to those deeper aquifers. So, it's not good to find PFAS anywhere, but it's certainly better to find it in the wastewater and in the monitoring wells before there's a problem with drinking water wells.
Rebekah Warren: Daniel, thank you for joining us and for this conversation today! That was Daniel Brown, climate resilience strategist and emerging contaminant specialist with the Huron River Watershed Council and our guest today on Issues of the Environment. Issues of the Environment is produced in partnership with the Office of the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner, and you hear it here every Wednesday. Thank you for listening! I'm Rebekah Warren, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU Ypsilanti.
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